Existing customer call centers and other customer care facilities enable customer service representatives (CSRs) to serve incoming and outgoing consumer calls for sales, technical support, account inquiry and other purposes. Most customer call centers distribute the calls to whichever representative happens to be available at the time of the call. However, this randomly assigned representative may not be the most appropriately skilled agent to address the consumer's request. Thus, if the representative must transfer the call, he or she must determine what skills will best serve the consumer's needs, which other representative possesses such skills, and which among the suitable representatives are available to handle a transfer of the call.
Another disadvantage of telephone-based support centers is that they require the representative to manipulate complex computer screens while attempting to retrieve information needed to address the consumer's request. In order to process the consumer's request, the representative must record a great deal of information about the call. Thus, in some systems, it is at the sole discretion of the representative to remember the important details of the call and to decide what information about the call is entered into the system, all in real time.
Moreover, during the servicing of a customer inquiry significant opportunities for promotional cross-selling or up-marketing may be ignored or lost. For instance, customers inquiring about an airline or hotel charge may be receptive to future hotel promotions or travel incentives, for example linked to branded credit card accounts. However, customer care facilities rarely if ever capitalize on the marketing potential of such automated, valet-like value added services.
These examples illustrate some of the difficulties and lost opportunities in the operation of present customer care centers.